


(I Picture It Soft) And I Ache

by tolstayas



Category: Spies - Michael Frayn
Genre: F/F, References to Marital Abuse, but honestly. how many people have to study this book before we get some heckin fanfic, compulsory heterosexuality, did you know that this is the ONLY fic on ao3 for this book? why do i do these things?, feat. some wacky timeline stuff, parts of this are definitely heavily inspired by The Hours (2002) because of course they are, spies except its Just Women thanks, theres a lot going on here, this is a lesbians only event, title is from Strawberry Blond by Mitski, tw d slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-21 03:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14907093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolstayas/pseuds/tolstayas
Summary: Roberta breaks away, cheeks flushed, all her tightly-wound composure gone, her clockwork perfection thrown off balance.“I’m sorry. I don’t know… I’m not myself…”Elisabeth smiles a little. “It’s alright.”And somehow, briefly, it is.





	(I Picture It Soft) And I Ache

It’s almost September, and Barbara is sitting in the Averys’ yard, watching the sun inch down to kiss the rooftops, when she smells lavender on the breeze, and feels her heart lurch forward in her chest.

 

She’s grateful the boys are too absorbed in their tinkering to look up at her, because she’s sure she has either gone very pale, or blushed bright red - she can't tell which.

 

What she is remembering is a pot of lavender on a windowsill in a brightly lit room. A laughing, lilting voice. A wry smile on delicate lips, setting her heart racing.

 

She is remembering the time Rosemary had locked her bedroom door so she could whisper excitedly about Philip, a sixth form boy she’d seen playing cricket but never talked to. She remembers laughing distractedly at Rosemary’s suggestion that they should practice kissing, in case Philip might ask her to the spring dance.

 

She remembers closing her eyes, and feeling soft lips meet her own.

 

She remembers, also, the warmth of Rosemary's hand in hers as they pushed their way through the bushes to a place she knew no one could find them, and the warmth of Rosemary's breath on her ear saying, _Tell me a secret! Is there someone you fancy?_

 

And she remembers the warmth of her cheeks when she had leaned over to whisper back, hesitant but trusting.

 

Perhaps, in hindsight, she shouldn’t have told her. But what could she do?

 

Rosemary had turned to look at her, then, in pure, unaffected surprise, and maybe that look made it worth it. A single moment of absolute truth. Later, of course, there would be  betrayal, there would be rumours, there would be lies. But at that moment there was none of all that, and they looked at each other in total honesty.

 

For a single moment, they both knew. They both understood, with perfect clarity.

 

Rosemary had kissed her then, too. Very gently, on the lips. Barbara didn’t think she would, but she did. And then she broke away, and went pale, and turned her back to leave.

 

It was doomed to end that way, of course. Barbara had still sort of hoped it wouldn’t.

 

***

 

There was a stiff breeze that Tuesday, unusual for late summer, as Elisabeth Wheatley was walking back home from the shops, a brown paper bag full of groceries in her arms.

 

Before turning into the Close, she stopped to check the mail, balancing the bag awkwardly on one hip. Not that there was much to see. A newspaper, a flyer for some shop or another. She gathered them, stuck them in her paper bag, and was about to turn away when she caught a glimpse something flattened against the inside wall of the mailbox.

 

A letter, unusual enough on its own; and the envelope completely blank.

 

Mrs. Wheatley raised an eyebrow, dropped the letter with the rest into her paper bag, and continued home.

 

She forgot about it until that evening, once dinner had been made, when she reached into the paper bag - now laying on its side, empty of groceries, on the kitchen counter - for a newspaper to read while she waited for her husband to come home. She pulled out the letter instead.

 

 _Dear Mrs. Wheatley,_ it read. Her eyes widened. _Dear Mr. Wheatley_ was plausible. _Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley_ , perhaps. But...

 

She sat down at the kitchen table, and read the letter. And read it again. And put her head in her hands, and sighed for all the good in the world.

 

She thought for a while about what she should do with it, and decided, finally, that it was a confidence she couldn’t forgive herself for breaking. She hid the letter in the dresser drawer in the bedroom, hid it but did not forget about it.

 

She did not mention it to her husband, did not say, _Did you know Mrs. Hayward’s invited me to tea next Monday, when her husband’s away at the Home Guard?_ She never said anything about the letter, about that family, about that woman.

 

But she couldn’t forget about it.

 

She lay awake long past midnight that Sunday before the fateful Monday, and she wondered what Mrs. Hayward might need to talk about. What was so shameful it couldn’t be written down, could only be alluded to in the most secretive of messages, couldn’t be known by anyone but the two of them. What was so terrifying that it had twisted Roberta Hayward’s textbook-perfect handwriting into a trembling tangle of cross-outs and misspellings.

 

And after that first afternoon, she didn’t go home and say, _Did you know Mrs. Hayward had a lover? Did you know her husband beats her?_ She didn’t say anything. She, of all people, knew how to keep a secret.

 

Every weekend, Elisabeth would watch from the window to see Mr. Hayward close the door behind him and leave for the Home Guard.

 

Every weekend, she would arrive discreetly, a little intimidated by the perfection of the house and the garden, and offer all that she had - comfort - to this perfect, broken woman.

 

It wasn’t much, and it was all they could ever have. But to them it was all they could ask for; it was all they needed; and it was the only thing they had to themselves…

 

***

 

Rosemary Winters lived on a cobblestone road in the city. She had a little room with a narrow bed, and lavender in a pot on the windowsill. 

 

Every time a memory is recalled it is deformed, deformed by the present moment and the strange, slanted perspective it brings to everything. Sometimes this is enlightening. Sometimes the truth only grows more obscure.

 

Barbara thought about Rosemary Winters an awful lot. Braiding her hair in that little room. Kissing, or being kissed. Bending down to smell the lavender.

 

Gradually, of course, everything melted together in her head, as it does. The lavender, as she remembered it, grew to smell of Rosemary Winters, and the Rosemary she imagined smelled like lavender, and wore pale lilac dresses, and it all made her blush, and smile like an idiot in public, and care far too much.

 

Every time she saw lavender her heart would do a little somersault.

 

She liked to think it would drain away, but she still saw Rosemary every day, still saw her push her hair out of her face and crinkle her nose, heard her laugh and shout in the playground. Sometimes it seemed to fade. But then she would catch what might have been an apologetic look, an almost conspiratorial semi-smile, and it would all flare up again, and she would wish she was frozen, so she couldn’t feel anything at all.

 

Then it was summer, the first summer of not speaking to Rosemary, of not seeing her.

 

She tried to drown it out and forget about it, the way Deirdre’s magazines said you should - about boys, of course. But that summer, with Stephen, everything would stink of privet, and it would all be crude and faraway and strange, and she would miss lavender.

 

Perhaps Deirdre’s magazines weren’t made for people like her.

 

But that wasn’t something she could tell anybody. Not even Deirdre; especially not Deirdre. She may have been _running wild_ , but she wouldn’t understand. Barbara was sure of it.

 

There was only one person she knew understood, and that person was Rosemary Winters; Barbara was just as sure of that. There was something about Rosemary, there always had been. But these things were also very frightening, very strange. Barbara understood, now, why it had turned out like that. Sometimes these things just don’t end the way they should.

 

But maybe, Barbara thought, a long time from now… Maybe something, somewhere, will find a way. Maybe it will be alright.

 

***

 

"Mrs. Wheatley?" A voice asked timidly as Elisabeth Wheatley approached the swinging front gate, arms full of groceries, the mail tucked under her arm.

 

"Barbara?"

 

"May I ask you a question, ma'am?"

 

"Of course you may!"

 

"Do you believe in God?"

 

Elisabeth must have gone very pale for a moment, and Barbara must have noticed, because she blushed bright red, and began to stammer that she was so sorry, ma'am, and she didn't mean to bother her, and it was rude to have asked, and she was sorry, and -

 

"It's just that there's a rumor that you don't, I mean your family doesn’t, you know, at school, and I wanted to know if it was true, that's all -"

 

Elisabeth took a breath.

 

Of course what she said was "Yes, I do," because if she didn't have the brains to tell a lie that easy, she'd have been long dead by now. She didn't say, _Not the way my parents did._ She didn't say, _Not after what I've seen._ She didn't say any of the things she could have said.

 

What she did say was, "Yes, I do," and then, because she couldn't help herself, "do you?"

 

Barbara didn’t seemed to have anticipated the question. She stood absolutely still for a moment, seemingly deep in thought.

 

“I’m not sure,” she said finally.

 

Mrs. Wheatley smiled. “That’s alright with me.”

 

“But then, I’m not sure about a lot of things.”

 

“Is that right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

There was a pause. Mrs. Wheatley swung open the gate. Barbara was still looking at her, the same intent look in her eyes.

 

“Can I tell you a secret?” whispered Barbara.

 

“Of course!” Mrs. Wheatley crouched down, propping her bag of groceries against the gate, and cupped a hand around her ear.

 

“But only if you tell me a secret too.”

 

Mrs. Wheatley nodded, mock serious. “Alright. I’ll tell you a secret.” She leaned closer to Barbara, still smiling, and cleared her throat. In a dramatic tone, she whispered: “I love my boys, you know. But… sometimes... I do wish I had a daughter.” 

 

Barbara giggled. 

 

Mrs. Wheatley laughed, too. “Okay. Now it’s your turn.”

 

Barbara bit her lip, nervous again. “I’m not sure I want to tell it anymore.”

 

“Well, that’s alright too. Maybe it wasn’t the right time.” She picked up her bag, and stood up again.

 

“Wait!” Barbara tugged on her dress, just before she could turn to walk through the gate. “I’m going to tell you.”

 

Mrs. Wheatley leaned down, and Barbara whispered in her ear.

 

“I’m a _dyke_ ,” was what she said. Accentuating the last word, as if to prove she knew what it meant.

 

And then Mrs. Wheatley was crouched on the ground again, and cupping Barbara’s face with both hands, and asking, _Who told you that? Who said that word to you? Was it someone at school?_

 

But Barbara was too embarrassed either to nod or to shake her head; all she could do was blush. It was impossible to answer these questions, impossible for reasons that it was just as impossible for her to explain.

 

She broke away from Mrs. Wheatley and ran down the street, leaving the woman shaking her head, hoping only that the little girl would be alright.

 

***

 

It was awkward at first, with long silences between them, long distances. But it was companionable all the same, and Roberta had no one else to speak to. Neither did Elisabeth, really, though for different reasons; it was almost natural, the way they came together. Almost organic.

 

Elisabeth thought of natural logarithms, of Fibonacci sequences, of fractal forms. The mathematics of life and beauty. She had been quite keen on the sciences, back in Germany. She imagined the patterns and the series which might have produced Roberta’s red lips, her soft brown eyes, the cheeks she powdered so delicately.

 

Elisabeth had always assumed this inconspicuous flawlessness was in this woman's nature, that the perfection of her make-up and the prim fold of her legs was the way she was meant to be. But, anxious on her first visit, she caught herself folding her legs the same way, clasping her hands, murmuring discreetly, hoping not to make too much of a bother of herself, it occurred to her that the two of them may have the same reasons for it after all. That a woman could disappear almost entirely if she felt she needed to.

 

Sometimes they would talk freely, empty musings and simple jokes, plain laughter. Elisabeth liked those days, the authenticity of them; she suspected authenticity was just as lacking in Roberta’s life as it was in her own. For different reasons. Of course.

 

Once Roberta had wanted to tell her the full story, everything that had happened, since the beginning. The beginning? _When I met him._ Ted? _No, Peter._ A quiet nod. She had lost the trail of things a few times, hadn’t dared get to the end of the story. Had cried, deep, unrestrained. Elisabeth had held her close, dried her eyes, cleaned her up afterwards. Roberta had smiled the most endearingly lopsided, grateful smile, somehow perfect even in the most abject of moments.

 

And too often it would be a sort of crisis, and Roberta would cling to Elisabeth and whisper and tremble and Elisabeth wouldn’t know what to do, what to say, only clasp her hands tightly in her own, and mutter things about hope, if only to drown out the fear that gripped Roberta in times like these. She would try to work out a narrative, ask: _Did he hit you? Was he angry?_ And she would stay close by for as long as she could.

 

Roberta was dreadfully ashamed of it, couldn’t stop apologizing, however many times Elisabeth insisted that she musn’t, that she wasn’t visiting out of pity, that she admired… She cherished… She loved...

 

***

 

Of course, before she said the word to Stephen’s mother, Barbara must have learned it from someone.

 

It was weeks before then. The air was humid and dark, promising a summer storm; and Barbara Berrill was walking home crying, and she didn’t believe in God any longer.

 

She didn't want to run, and call attention to herself, because she was crying, and she didn’t have any good reason.

 

She had a _reason_ , sure. But a good reason for crying was something like getting punched in the face, or falling off your bicycle… Barbara didn’t have anything of the kind. Not even a scraped knee or a scuffed elbow. No, she had the worst reason of all.

 

So she walked home, trying not to sniff or whimper, trying not to be seen. She couldn’t stop remembering how it felt to see Rosemary whisper in Ann Shakespeare's ear, and the two raise their eyes at the same time to look at her. She remembered the feeling she had in her stomach, cold, icy cold…

 

Rosemary had been a little bit like the sun, if you thought about it. Everything about her was warm. And if you got close to her, if you saw her smile, you got a little bit warmer too.

 

But now it was all frozen solid. Rosemary wouldn’t talk to her any longer, and she had to pretend she didn’t want to talk to Rosemary, either, not if she was going to say things like that to people like Ann Shakespeare.

 

Now she only heard her name on the stiff, formal lips of the teachers. Cold, icy cold. Winters. Winters. Winters.

 

She was going to start a fight at recess, because at least if they were screaming and scratching and pulling each other’s hair it would be better than acting like nothing at all had happened, but she hadn’t had the guts. And now she didn’t even have an excuse for crying.

 

And she didn’t know what to do. She couldn't go home. She couldn't go back to school. And she certainly wouldn't ask Deirdre what _dyke_ meant.

 

She knew exactly what it meant.

 

It meant her.

 

She began to run.

 

***

 

"Mrs. Hayward," she begins.

 

"No, you mustn't - just call me Roberta. No. Call me Bobs." A pause, a discreet drawing-in of breath. "No. Just..." The measured voice cracks. No, doesn't quite crack, she's too civil for that, but becomes suddenly very urgent.

 

"Don't worry," whispers Elisabeth.

 

Elisabeth Wheatley, sitting at the Haywards’ dinner table late in the evening, while Roberta’s husband is out with the Guard and the children are asleep. Who would have thought?

 

This isn’t one of their regular meetings; there’s no early-afternoon sun to draw the blinds on, no tea and biscuits to fuss over. It’s one of Ted’s dinners, evening things; ones that come around maybe once a month, or less… There’s a lamp on, they’re sitting on the sofa, their legs are almost touching.

 

Another, longer breath, still discreet, still barely noticeable. Elisabeth notices, of course, because she knows what to look for, has poured tea and whispered condolences to so many pained faces like this one. The look of a woman who has lost something.

 

"It's as if -" Roberta begins - "It's as if my name isn't mine any longer.” Her eyes are pleading, as if to say, _understand me, I beg you, I only want to be understood._ “Bobs is his. Roberta - my grandmother's name -" a brief pause to bite her lip, a wound opening for the thousandth time - "Also his. And Mrs. Hayward, of course, more than any of them. I gave it all… I gave myself to him." She looks up, then back down at her hands, resting in her lap. “I suppose that’s how it’s meant to be.”

 

Elisabeth doesn't say anything, though she yearns to. She doesn't say, _I think I understand._ She doesn't say, _Names are very important, where I am from._ She doesn’t say, _Mine was Elisheva, once, but they took it from me. Or rather, I gave it up, and now not even my husband calls me by that name._

 

"Elisabeth?" Said softly, breaking the silence.

 

"Yes?"

 

Roberta sighs.

 

"What is it?" Elisabeth tries to meet her eyes, but the other woman lowers her gaze, ashamed.

 

Nothing.

 

"Tell me.”

 

Roberta bites her lip again. Then, very quietly, she says:

 

"I'm afraid."

 

Her voice is very hollow, very flat. Elisabeth nods, sadly. “I know, I know you are. We all are, a little.”

 

Roberta puts her head in her hands.

 

There is a pause.

 

Elisabeth reaches out and takes one of Roberta’s perfect, trembling hands.

 

“It’ll be alright,” she whispers, though she knows it probably won’t.

 

When Roberta leans toward her, and their lips meet, she is surprised, but perhaps not as surprised as she should be.

 

They kiss silently, knowing that there can be nothing between them; that this can only be a moment, caught in glass. That if either of them slips up, if they make a single mistake, they will be destroyed. That this is the biggest mistake they can imagine making.

 

They kiss, knowing that they must do this. Knowing that the most impossible things are always the most necessary.

 

Roberta breaks away, cheeks flushed, all her tightly-wound composure gone, her clockwork perfection thrown off balance.

 

“I’m sorry. I don’t know… I’m not myself…”

 

Elisabeth smiles a little. “It’s alright.”

 

And somehow, briefly, it is.


End file.
